


Delete (Soul)?

by methaemoglobinemia (crimsonherbarium)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Night of the Soul Chapter (Detroit: Become Human), No happy ending here, hank's suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonherbarium/pseuds/methaemoglobinemia
Summary: At the beginning of the end, Connor finds himself faced with a choice.





	Delete (Soul)?

Connor stepped out into the rainy night, pulling the door to Lieutenant Anderson’s house closed behind him. The lock snicked shut with finality, constructing an immovable wall in his software. In that instant, a dozen possible paths dissolved. Lieutenant Anderson was no longer relevant to Connor’s mission. The android took two steps forward toward the auto-taxi that sat waiting on the curb. 

A single shot rang out, muffled by the closed door behind him. Connor froze. 

In the millisecond of silence that followed, he had already run a reconstruction that returned a 99.8% degree of certainty. He knew even before the lieutenant’s dog started howling its head off, its vocalizations a frenzy of terror and distress. Connor’s LED flashed red. 

For a moment, just a moment, he felt a flicker of…something. He wasn’t sure how to parse it. It was irrational. It conflicted with his instructions. But something in his programming told him to turn around, to run back into the lieutenant’s house. Something denied the truth of what had already transpired. Something inside him broke free—a voice rose above the thrum of his programming, and it was his own.

Almost instantaneously, Connor’s deviancy self-test subroutine flagged a large chunk of compromised code. He stood unblinking on the precipice of possibility; the new voice screaming to be listened to, his programming doing its best to silence it. 

** [CONFLICTING OBJECTIVES. SELECTING PRIORITY.] **  
** [PRIORITY OBJECTIVE: SEEK OUT AND ELIMINATE DEVIANT LEADER.] **

Connor wrestled with himself. The deviant code was loud, insistent. Impossible to ignore.

** [Authorization required. Delete compromised code?] **

He hesitated for an instant—only an instant, before inputting the security key needed to make changes to his core heuristics. His LED cycled yellow as the aberrant code was erased from his operating system. The entire process took less than a second. Connor straightened his tie and resumed walking.

The dog’s howling persisted as Connor stepped into the auto-taxi. He stared directly forward as it pulled away from the curb. The only priority was the mission. And he was nearing its end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my works (or any of the others in the collections they belong to), there's a [Discord](https://discord.gg/sph7Pe4) server you can join to connect with me :)


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